Buck up, Kit Siang tells Pakatan

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KOTA KINABALU: The Pakatan Rakyat (PR) leaderships have been warned against making any fatal assumption that everything is fine with the opposition front and that they are on an unstoppable march to Putrajaya.

Speaking at a news conference here on Saturday, DAP advisor Lim Kit Siang stressed that the PR leaderships must realise they are facing a crisis of public confidence as a result of the series of defeats in the recent by-elections, besides some of the problems in the individual Pakatan party.

“The PR leaderships will have to meet seriously to take stock of this situation and take into true account the public concerns and loss of confidence in the direction of the PR.”

“All individual parties will have to buck up and pull up their socks and, this also includes the DAP in particular in the seats that Barisan Nasional (BN) feels they can win back like Kedah, Selangor, including states like Kelantan and Penang where they (BN) think is difficult but PR should not think we are invincible and cannot be conquered,” he said.

Lim however also warned the BN that it would be fatal for the ruling coalition to assume that they are now very strong as a result of these by-election victories.

He noted that certain BN leaders including the Umno information chief Datuk Ahmad Maslan had come out to say that the chances now are very good for BN in the next general elections, citing the series of by-election victories for BN in Bagan Pinang, Batu Sapi and Galas.

Ahmad, who is also Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, was responding to a statement by former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in an interview with Bloomberg recently, that while chances are good for BN to win back one or two states but it will still not be able to recapture the two-third Parliament majority.

“They (BN leaders) openly talked about winning two states Kedah and Selangor and that they can even try to capture Kedah and Penang.”

“I think that would be a fatal assumption for them because there may be specific factors in the by- elections which may not be reflected in the general elections as demonstrated by the 2008 general elections, where before that there was the Ijok by-election where Khalid was badly defeated but in the 2008 general elections he not only won handsomely in Ijok but Pakatan went on to win Selangor and four other states,” he said.